Who mentions love in a blog post some almost seven months from Valentine’s Day? I’m that guy.

I avoid Pacificon because I don’t think it’s a good con and because I don’t think it treats GMs well. When Celesticon was around, I got to the point of avoiding both because they split the gamerbase and made everything too much effort for what weren’t particularly good experiences. I don’t have that justification anymore, yet I feel no particular desire to start attending Pacificon, which long long ago was my favorite of the local cons.

Close to the con, I was informed we were going to demo Traveller with actual sample cards. So, I dragged myself the ten minute walk to the con that I normally make just to go to dinner with my friends and got a weekend badge.

Hmmmmm … let’s see. I looked at the Conan RPG corebook for a bit. I watched Arkham whatever (they all run together in my mind since it seems like pretty much a money grab to just make another variation of the same game). I watched some AGoT 2e Boardgame play barely, glanced at some wargaming.

Mostly, I made myself available for demos. Jeff had run a con listed event on Friday, which attracted more interest than our plop ourselves down wherever we could find space demoing. Jeff and I talked about stuff, made some notes about next ship deck inclusions based on what we think the game could use more of.

It’s theoretically weird that I eschew saying much about Traveller here, but it does make more sense to post thoughts about the game on our website when we decide to launch it with content, which I expect to be soon.

No, the point of posting about the con is to give … insight … into my predilections, I guess I suppose. I’m willing to actively oppose the activity of playing games when I feel like it. I could have played Type P, but didn’t. I could have played boardgames, but didn’t. I could have suggested something, but didn’t. I could have pushed for us doing something with the Conan RPG once I had a better idea when I was going to be at the con, but didn’t.

And, yet, I consider what I do as an activity of gaming. Before I got into Shadowfist, some 20 years after it came out, I would watch people play because I knew the people. I also played every few years, but, mostly, I watched people play. I didn’t glean a ton from that, but I may have gleaned some tiny amount and I could have more-gleaned.

There are some games I ultraglean from watching. Then, there’s discussing.

As an aside, I don’t have much desire to watch V:TES games, as I find them frustrating to watch, much like I find watching pretty much any CCG I play frustrating. I realized why at the European Championships while talking to a Swedish player. For games I know, I want to point out what people are doing that doesn’t make sense to me. That totally doesn’t work. Yet, I’m perfectly happy to watch games I don’t know and seek just to learn because I don’t have opinions on what people should do. It’s not just CCGs, it just happens that CCGs are more likely to be games I know well enough to think I’m more brillianter than the people playing. I can tolerate watching mahjong being played better because I used to do that a lot and, possibly, because I don’t care as much whether people make good decisions in simpler games.

Discussing games can be far more fun than playing them. I never liked 1e A Game of Thrones Boardgame as a game, but I found it interesting as a puzzle. Since it wasn’t terribly random, what moves should you intend on making as each position? It’s like figuring out optimal moves for whatever boardgame given some particular set up. Like how people talk about chess and bridge, et al.

Obviously, terrible play can also make for good stories. I value my terrible RPG experiences for the ability to bitch about them forever. The “mostly the game consisted of shooting our own mechs” Mekton game that prevents me from playing Mekton locally, the “when do the PCs get to do something instead of watching the NPC do stuff” Maelstrom game that solidified the unbreakable law that Brad and I are not allowed to play in the same scheduled RPG events, the “yup, this is a pretty typical way people play D&D” D&D games that mean I never will sign up for D&D at any con, etc. all offer something besides con strategizing.

Similarly, awful CCG experiences can make for stories that I’m sure everyone is utterly fascinated to hear about many times in their ephemeral lives.

Had two meals with con-goers and shed some enlightenment upon them as to the Truth. What was that about not playing but still gaming? Oh, yeah, probably 99% of my True Dungeoning is not actually playing it but wondering whether to sleeve more tokens, deciding when to jump into auctions, and adding builds to the app for various different formats of play since I now have to have significantly different builds for normal versus hardcore/nightmare, possibly different builds for hardcore versus nightmare, different builds for Grind, and do this for a bunch of classes I probably won’t play but might.

I guess the point of this post is not just that, yes, Traveller is progressing and Pacificon annoys me, but that we do things that sound suboptimal because we care enough. Love, yo.

Extended credits: Couple of us are going to Gamehole Con to play True D/G. Since I both have real looking cards (and it would be very possible that I would have final print cards by November) and not anything to do in the mornings when there are no True D/G events, I expect to set up shop in open gaming or wherever and demo Traveller to those who wish to be exposed to a game so brilliant it like radiates UHEGRs or UHECRs or whatever (latter is more searchable if you don’t 说 my lingo).